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Wednesday, August 28, 2013

Copyright law prevents me from doing a straight scan of this story, so I've cut and pasted some of the graphics and re-typed the text. This appeared in the Fall issue of Playboy (let us say it's been a few years, shall we?). It won Best Story Of the Year Award.

Sitting
indolently in his gravity couch, Nerl Forfeech was drooling over this
month’s Plaything centerfold. The shiny
cellulose pages fell all the way to the floor, because on the planet Znar-foot
there are six genders, and the photograph included all the erotic subtypes.

In
this issue, as always, a gorgeous nude Six sprawled in the typically

suggestive pile, gravity being so low on
Znar-foot that any other arrangement would have resulted in the lovers floating
away. Their faces were lit with the
ecstasy of romantic communion, their organs photographed in a teasing way to be almost, but not quite, visible. Nerl, idly fondling one of his
protuberances, sighed as he viewed the tinted nipples, the arousing half-glimpses of fur-covered
apertures.

Then,
suddenly, the door-iris swooshed open and Cloong walked in. Nerl hastily stuffed the segments back into
the magazine. He almost fell from the couch as he attempted to hide the issue under
some cushions.

Cloong
giggled at her embarrassed partial lover.
“Oh, go ahead, “ she piped. “I know what you're looking at. I don’t
care. They ARE rather lovely... but so
impossible, don’t you think?”

Nerl
threw down the magazine in disgust. “I
wish you weren’t so right. I’ve had only two Sixes in my entire life, and both
of them got weird right away... right after....”

His
voice trailed off at the memory of it.
The ecstasy! And then,
inevitably, confusion.

Cloong
took Nerl by the trunk nooks, and they clung together in mutual frustration. Cloong was Nerl’s Two.
And together they had a tentative Three with Albolon Farfing, who,
unfortunately, was doing a loose sort of thing with a Two, Three and Four down
in the Freesex District in the city of Fichi
Forfoot. Albolon had a tendency to be unreliable, but still they loved him,
if a bit reservedly, in return.

“What
do you want to do tonight?” Cloong asked, licking Nerl’s eyeknobs
playfully. To Nerl it only made the
craving for someone to be inserting into his side slits more powerful. Cloong was only a quasi-fem, good for
sucking and the like....but he shouldn’t be too unfair to her. After all, he was only a quasi-him. His abilities were also limited. Like it or not, it was the way nature made
them. With dozens of erogenous zones,
the Znar-fichi needed flesh on all sides, working in combination to produce the
orgasmic culmination of multiple personalities. You could get off with Three; Four and Five were even better. But being a Six was the only way to achieve the ultimate OMYGOD-gasm.

“What
can we do?” Nerl echoed distractedly.
“Is there anything we can actually do to remedy this feeling?”

“Sure,”
Cloong cheerfully volunteered. “We can
go pick up Albolon and cruise a Triples Bar.
You never know what might happen.”

“Not
again,” Nerl groaned. “I can’t take it,
the futile games, the flash and glitter.
I’m not a complicated person. All I need
is a good, simple five-to-one relationship.
That’s not so much to ask.”

“Come
on, “ urged Cloong, lifting her appendagtes in his trunk nooks.

The effect was sufficiently erotic. “You’ll never meet anybody if you don’t show
your faces. What can you lose? Would you rather stay home all night and masturbate in the washing machine?”

After picking up Albolon, the three of them strode snout in snout down the flamboyant promenades of
Flesh-Bargain City, the official cruising ground for Znar-Foot’s frustrated
sexuals.

Cloong
was bouyed up between her partial lovers, dressed in a revealing mini-suit that
left quite a few of her tubes exposed.
The night was torpid, just right for the ongoing voyeurism of Six Sex
Street. Albolon and Nerl were
elegant beyond compare in their striped priapic enhancers. As they progressed down the brightly lit
avenue, they caught the envious stares of
lonely Ones or Twos, and occasionally the pitying glances of bustling
Fours and Fives. But there were no
Sixes. The Sixes would undoubtedly be
at someone’s apartment, either having sex or arguing.

Cloong,
Nerl and Albolon stopped to peer into various clubs and bars, to see which ones
were running Threes that night.

As
they walked, peering through the transparent view bubbles of the different clubs,
they were inevitably accosted by street hustlers making suggestive offers: “Say honeys, I got just the Three for you,
never been Sixed before, any of them.
Got a taste for some fresh action?” This came from a character who sported a mustache grown straight across the top of his skull crest. Anotoher tout wheedled at them: “Need a massage, sports? Got
a lovely pair, just juicin’ to get their trunks on you.”

Ignoring
the lascivious stares and remarks, Cloong, Nerl and Albolon at length came to a well-known place, The Sexagram Club,
and saw that it was running Triples that night. The house band,
The Numbers Racket, could be heard
raucously blaring. The partial-lovers' pulses raced with anticipation at the wild action
within. The Racket, a successful Four
offstage, never failed to turn on the audiences with their erotogymnastics and
jerk’n’jell music. Cloong, Nerl
and Albolon showed their IDs and
entered the crowded room that smelled of stimu-mist and trunk-pit persp.

“Hey
babies,” a Triple called out, rocking past in an
orbiting dance.“Hey hey, let’s get it on.”

Cloong
pulled back. “How unsubtle. Come on, boys, this is no place to meet nice
people. Let’s get out of here.”

But
Nerl and Albolon had already spotted some promising looking action.

“No, let’s stay, Cloong. It was your idea in the first place. If we don’t like it after a while, we can go
someplace else.” They pulled her
farther into the seething mass, where dancing bodies yanked and plopped
spasmodically, imitating sex.

Onstage,
The Numbers Racket had sprawled atop one another in a simulated orogenital
configuration, while dancing Threes screamed their shock and delight.

Against
the walls of the room, stimu-mist vendors lined up next to sensory-enhancement
dealers, exchanging money balls for popular brands of dope. The rest of the room was all dance floor,
with sufficient space in which to flirt, writhe and show off simul-sex
aptitude.

Cloong
and her hims moved onto the dance floor, their eyes constantly shifting across
the room, taking in the more attractive groups, canceling out the ones who held
no immediate appeal.

Since
their tastes were relatively alike, they intuitively crossed through the
various combinations until they were close to another sexy Three who seemed
alone.

Perfect! A Three with two fems. Cloong lowered her tubes a trifle
suggestively at the him of the group.
Meanwhile, Nerl had shown a definite tumescence at the she in the
flaming orange trunk gripper. They
danced closer, coyly initiating eye contact. Albolon, however, didn’t move correspondingly. He was too busy eyeing a fem in a different
Three altogether.

Cloong
jerked at him and he staggered forward.
“Idiot,” she hissed, but the cute Three had caught the little
interchange and had indifferently moved away through the crowd.

Nerl
reprimanded Albolon. “You blew it for us, man.
Didn’t you see those gorgeous fems?
We would have been perfect. I
just know it.”

Albolon
cursed. “Ah, the one in the dotted
tube-throttler was a pig. I almost
scored another Three for us all by myself until you pulled at me so obviously.”

Cloong
waved her eyeknobs impatiently. “Look
over there. Do you think we can all
agree on one Three to come on to? How
about that short-tall-tall number in the corner?”

Al
and Nerl furtively checked it out.
“Okay. Let’s go.”

Again,
they spasmed across the dance floor, dodging single and double Triples to get
near the attractive Three that Cloong had pointed out. This one was a good dancer, doing all the
most fashionable orifice-openers among several maneuvering Threes. They were dressed in one of the latest
cozy-suits, a gauzy garment that joined the three bodies in a spacious but
intimate arrangement. There was an
obvious zipper where another Three suit could easily be hooked in.

“We
don’t have one of those suits,” Nerl commented negatively.
“This Three’s too uptown for us. And
look at the competition. I hate
standing in line.”

“Don’t
be a onesyhead,” said Albolon, who lusted after high class liaisons. “We’re
artists. Rich Threes need us.”

“Now
that I think about it,” said Cloong abjectly, “rich people have no
sensitivity. Maybe we should go check
out that long-haired Three over there in the middle.”

By
the time they were in close, Albolon
was dragging the others. The music
lulled for a moment. Agressively, he
leered at the Three and said, “Hey, babies, didn’t we meet at a sensory-awareness
clinic in Big Stir?”

The
chic threesome laughed disdainfully and, without even answering, lost itself in
the crowd.

Nerl
and Cloong clung to each other in utter embarrassment.

“Albolon,” she said sadly, “if we don’t get our
relationship together, pretty soon we’ll be a Two.”

Albolon
farted from his side vents in frustration.

“Would
that be so bad? I’ve heard you guys whispering together, I know what you think.
You think I care about that Trip up in Snort Beach, the one you guys
can’t stand.”

He
was beating his trunks up and down laboredly.
Cloong stroked the pits with tender solicitation.

Albolon
backed away petulantly. “You’re just
possessive, that’s what. Just because I
have my own style and like to check out things on my own.”

He
turned, broke away from them, while they stood there, stunned. All around, Threes were watching them and
giggling.

“And
you know,” Albolon said stingingly, “I do get off on my other Trip. At least my
Snort Beach floozy gives me plenty of space.
Not only that, but they give better trunk, too.”

“Albolon,
you’re crazy,” protested Cloong.

“You
see,” he said, his eye nooks wide, “that’s what you really think of me when I’m
being honest. Well, we're finished! Goodbye.”
He pivoted and was lost in the
whirling bodies. Cloong and Nerl tried
to catch him, but the door of the club hissed and shut and Albolon was gone.

Shocked,
under the mortifying gaze of twittering
Threes, they left the club. Outside,
the street was empty of Albolon.

With
tears rolling down their face-folds, they made their way across the livid
avenue, but the lights and gaiety had lost their charm.

“Let’s
go home, Nerl,” Cloong said mournfully.
“This is no way to find your nice, simple five to one relationship.”

Nerl
stood stubbornly in one spot. “Go home?
You must be kidding! We just
lost our Three. I don’t want to go home
alone tonight. I’m just not ready for
it.”

“You’re
NOT alone,” said Cloong, a trifle peeved.

“You
know what I mean,” said Nerl, regretting his spite.

“I
guess I do,” she said, fatalistically.

Nerl
gazed up into the dimly visible heavens, reddish in the glow of the street
lights. All his anguish at the way they
had been constructed poured out of his heart and flailed weakly against the
indifference of the cosmos.

“There
are are some worlds out there,” he said distantly, “where I’ll bet they have
only three genders, or maybe even just two.
Different arrangements entirely.”
Cloong laughed and took his
center trunk with her snout. “Come on,
Nerl. That’s absurd. Think how dull life would be. It would all be so simple! TOO simple.”

He
shook his shaggy mane, as if to dispel the far-flung fantasy. Taking his partial girlfriend by one of her
more exposed tubes, he led her down the hysterical walkways in search of a
Four-Two club.